The Medical Testing on Animals

In 1983 the pharmaceutical company Pfizer carried out a special study to see if animal experiments could correctly identify cancer-causing chemicals. The results would be vitally important because despite costing millions of dollars, no one really knew whether the tests provided adequate protection against hazardous substances. Human findings were compared with experimental data from rats and mice for all chemicals known to cause cancer in people. The outcome was disturbing: in most cases animal tests had given the wrong answer. The report concluded that we would have been better off to toss a coin! The quarrel between those who would endow animals with "rightsaE...